hello and welcome to our impactful projects and planning micro training series i'm jamie azdani in today's session we're going to talk about project planning and how to integrate the five key elements of impactful projects into one project plan so over the last few months over the last few micro training sessions i've been talking about these five key elements of impactful project management scope stakeholders outcomes or deliverables schedule and communications i believe that a focus on these elements throughout a project can greatly impact your project's success especially for mission driven organizations and we definitely want to be focusing on these elements during project planning so project planning helps us strategize a path to project success allowing us to consider and plan for all of the factors that will impact our project including the five key elements project plans also help us set clear expectations for our stakeholders so that we are all on the same page about what will be accomplished during the project clear project plans can also help our project team members visualize their role on the project and really better understand the work they will be expected to perform and how their work impacts the project as a whole so how should we approach project planning especially in mission-driven organizations how can we integrate planning for scope stakeholders outcomes schedule and communications into one project plan so i've got one approach and three tips for project planning that i want to share with you today so let's dive in the approach i recommend for mission driven organizations is to follow these five steps in project planning and we'll go through each step one by one so the first step is to define or confirm your project scope scope establishes our project's purpose and is critical to ensuring buy-in and engagement so you want to get your scope nailed down as early as possible next we want to identify our project stakeholders and define the roles that they will play in the project stakeholder engagement is really the foundation of projects and mission-driven organizations so we want to consider and plan for engaging our stakeholders as early as possible in the project next plan for communication so good communication is so important to project success so communication planning also needs to happen early and it pairs nicely with stakeholder planning

then we want to define our outcomes or deliverables and once we've defined what those outcomes are it's much easier to plan for other specific factors that will impact your project like quality measures developing a detailed budget figuring out how you're going to procure the resources that you need and outcomes planning also leads us to task planning and that is what is going to drive the actions of our project

and then you can go ahead and set a schedule creating deadlines and milestones that can be used to set expectations and monitor project progress so this approach to project planning incorporates the five key elements and i believe it can really help you create an actionable plan and so that's an approach to developing your plan i also have some tips to share my first tip is to involve your key your team and key stakeholders in planning so while project managers are absolutely accountable for planning that doesn't mean that we have to do it all alone so rely on your team and project initiators or sponsors to provide feedback and input you should definitely discuss and confirm the project's scope with your project initiators and involve them and your team in stakeholder identification we can also involve our team and communication planning and we will likely need their expertise to define outcomes and tasks and of course we want to work with our team to ensure that our schedule is reasonable and achievable

so my second tip is to broadly share your plan so once you have a plan we want to make that plan a transparent document to encourage trust but also to encourage engagement with our project i recommend making at least the key elements of your plan available to all of your stakeholders so sharing the project scope a stakeholder role list a schedule and outcomes definitions can really help set expectations and also maintain support and momentum throughout your project project management tools and dashboards are great at supporting this type of sharing allowing you to communicate your plan and project progress relatively easily and that leads me to my third tip which would be per is to be prepared to revise your plan so i want you to let go of the idea of creating the perfect plan even though you are going to be sharing your plan with leadership and stakeholders so while it would be amazing if the first draft of your plan required no changes while also inspiring your team and ensuring project success our goals should not be a perfect plan our goal is a plan that allows us to successfully deliver on our projects outcomes so being able to respond to changing needs and a shifting environment is more important than plan perfection so be prepared to rethink revise and redo your plan so start with these five tips five steps get input from your team and key stakeholders share your plan once you've drafted it and be prepared to revise your plan to meet changing circumstances so that's what i have for you today on project planning if you'd like more help with project planning you might want to check out our project planning checklist this simple checklist is a great start to project planning and can help you develop a more consistent project planning workflow so this free download is available at yazdaniconsulting.com resources if you need more hands-on support leading projects and teams visit our project solutions page at yazdaniconsulting.comprojects to learn about our services great so i'm happy to take any questions that you have about project planning please add them in the comments due to the slight delay that happens when you're streaming on linkedin i'm going to give folks a few moments to get on the same page with me and add their questions now if i'm not able to answer your question live i'm happy to respond later in the comments and of course you can always find all of the ways to contact me at azdaniconsulting.comcontact please do reach out to me if you'd like to talk about project planning

okay so a question i'm i'm often asked is you know i'm expected to have a plan right away including a detailed budget how can i involve stakeholders given the short timeline and so i would say this is a really common issue especially in mission-driven organizations where there's often planning that has to happen to get project funding this is where i think involving a few key folks can really help so you can probably confirm a scope identify a few stakeholders set a basic schedule and begin defining outcomes in a single meeting with a few key stakeholders which should help you with those budget estimates then you can involve more stakeholders once you really dive into assigning roles planning for communication and of course doing more detailed task planning now because your plan should be a living document you can involve more stakeholders later as you rethink and revise your plan

so another question is what do you mean by mission-driven organizations so i use mission-driven to mean non-profits associations educational institutions libraries and government agencies because these organizations are mission focused rather than profit driven because projects in these types of organizations tend to be pretty collaborative they require buy-in from diverse stakeholders success is usually measured by their users and community rather than in dollars there are some elements of project management that i believe are more critical than in other sectors and that's where those five key elements come from but i do think the approach i shared today could really work in other types of environments non-mission driven environments as well

wonderful so feel free to comment or reach out and message me with any additional questions that you have and thank you so much for participating in our impactful projects and planning micro training series you can visit yazdaniconsulting.com ipp to view all of the sessions in the series and learn about upcoming micro trainings thank you